Monday July 21, Day One

Breakfast on the morning of DAY ONE!! And Trudy enjoys her first taste of both CMUBS food and dining with a view.  The weather is marginal, at best, so the view consists mostly of low mist and a cloudy horizon. 

The Papermaking/Bookbinding class and the Impressions in Clay classes this year are very small - 5 students in each one.  So for the first day both the classes combine into one and we begin by working in clay.  We pile into the vans with boxes of clay slabs and take off to press them onto to anything we find to take "impressions of the island".  The Clay people will eventually fire them for use in their projects and the Paper people will use them as molds in which to cast paper.  These are our instructors, Sally Rose (of CMU) and Jane White (of Pewabic Pottery).

We start at the cabin of "Dr." Protor, a very old historic site that is seldom open to actually go inside.  We are given free rein to make impressions from any of the old things we find inside or outside.  Great, but we have to battle our way through CLOUDS of ravenous mosquitos to do so. 

After leaving the cabin we head back into town to the world famous "Toy Museum" (across from the seagulls FAVORITE roosting place) to take inpressions of Mary's incredibly eclectic collection of cement sculptures in the jungle in the back of the store.  Again, accompanied by hords of DNA seeking mosquitos. 

With our clay impressions in hand we head back to the station to cast them in plaster or ready them for kiln firing. 

There is a group of Beekeeppers finishing their stay on the station and they give a talk about bees that the clay people attend at the end of the day while we papermakers start pulling our first sheets of paper from the vats of colored pulp that we prepare before bed.  By the end of the day Trudy and I are totally pooped, but are pretty happy campers.